Sunday, April 5, 2015

One63 European Bistro & Bar near City Square/Komtar JBCC in Johor Bahru!

Today we head across the Causeway to the city of Johor Bahru for a quick dinner review at One63 European Bistro & Bar! If you're one of the tens of thousands of Singaporeans who occasionally take a bus across the bridge for some shopping, food, massage, etc, you might be interested too - This restaurant is just 400-500m walk from Komtar JB. It's in the row of shophouses on Jalan Trus/Jalan Ngee Heng, directly opposite the Doubletree by Hilton JB hotel.

One63 is helmed by Chef Kelvin who has previously done stints with three Michelin-starred restaurants in France, but strangely has a heavily Italian-weighted European menu. The meal starts off with a somewhat oddly-shaped and flavoured bread, which if we're honest wasn't very good.

The Cream of Mushroom Soup for RM 10 was delicious and value for money, though, with a good proportion of mushroom to cream in the flavour profile. We thought that the texture was spot on, too - not too creamy or starchy, and not too chunky.

For mains I had the Seafood Risotto - a proper arborio rice'd one with seafood, saffron, white wine and parmigiano cheese - for RM 36. The risotto was pretty good - not too starchy not too soupy. It came with a generous amount of shrimp, mussels, squid and scallops. We suspect that some of the items may have been frozen and not fresh, though, as there was a hint of fishiness in some spoonfuls of the rice.

The darling tried the Braised Lamb Shank with eggplant salad, potato wedges and garden vegetables (RM 37). Lamb was braised til tender, and very tasty. Vegetables and the supermarket-bag potato wedges were par for the course I suppose.

We were a bit disappointed that only the two least-enticing options off the dessert menu were available - crepes and Panna Cotta (RM 16.30). As you know, panna cotta is an Italian dessert generally made of thick cream, egg white and honey, and which generally isn't served in a small glass vial. Nevertheless I quite liked both the cream and the passion fruit glaze on the top, but the darling thought it was overpoweringly sour.

At a final bill of RM 132 (SGD 60) for two people, we thought the food was overall fairly good. Ambience in the restaurant was decent, if a tad bit noisy thanks to the lack of any sound-absorbing materials, and service was pretty standard "Malaysian-mid-range-restaurant" - that is to say the wait staff were competent but not particularly friendly nor knowledgeable about the menu.

One63 is open for lunch and dinner 7 days a week. If you're in JB for the day, I'd say it is totally worth the short walk for a meal if you're tired of all the fast food options available in City Square or Komtar. No pork served.